and cooked their rations.  It may be easily imagined that both armies were glad enough to fall upon the ground and rest after such a day of blood and carnage, with the smoke, dust, and weltering heat of the day.  Before the sound of the last gun had died away in the distance one hundred thousand men were stretched upon the ground fast asleep, while near a third of that number were sleeping their last sleep or suffering from the effects of fearful wounds.  The ghouls of the battlefield are now at their wanton work.  Stealthily and cautiously they creep and grope about in the dark to hunt the body of an enemy, or even a comrade, and strip or rob him of his little all.  Prayers, groans, and curses mingle, but the robber of the battlefield continues his work.  Friends seek lost comrades here and there, a brother looks, perhaps, in vain for a brother.

The loss in some of our regiments was appalling, especially the Seventh.  Two regimental commanders, of that command had fallen, Colonel Aiken and Captain White, leaving Captain Hard, one of the junior Captains, in command.  The regiment lost in the two battles of Maryland Heights and Sharpsburg, two hundred and fifty-three out of four hundred and forty-six.

General McClellan, in his testimony before the War Investigating Committee, says:  “We fought pretty close upon one hundred thousand men.  Our forces were, total in action, eighty-seven thousand one hundred and sixty-four.”  Deducting the cavalry division not in action of four thousand three hundred and twenty, gives McClellan eighty-two thousand eight hundred and forty-four, infantry and artillery.

General Lee says in his report:  “The battle was fought by less than forty thousand men of all arms on our side.”  The actual numbers were: 

Jackson, including A.P.  Hill ...... 10,000
Longstreet ........................ 12,000
D.H.  Hill and Walker ............... 7,000
Cavalry ............................ 8,000
______
37,000

Deduct four thousand cavalry on detached service and not on the field from Lee’s force, and we have of infantry, artillery, and cavalry, thirty-three thousand.  Jackson only had four thousand on the left until the arrival of A.P.  Hill, and withstood the assaults of forty thousand till noon; when re-enforced by Hill he pressed the enemy from the field.

The next day was employed in burying the dead and gathering up the wounded.  Those who could travel were started off across the Potomac on foot, in wagons and ambulances, on the long one hundred miles march to the nearest railroad station, while those whose wounds would not admit of their removal were gathered in houses in the town and surgeons detailed to remain and treat them.  On the morning of the 19th some hours before day the rumbling of the wagon trains told of our march backward.  We crossed the Potomac, Longstreet leading, and Jackson bringing up the rear.  A great many that had been broken down by the rapid